Wall Street edges higher in thin post-holiday trade

NEW YORK: US stocks climbed on Friday in thin trading volume during a shortened session after Thanksgiving, driven by gains in retail and a recovery in tech stocks.

Expectations for a Federal Reserve rate cut in December strengthened throughout the week, helping underpin sentiment across equity markets.

All of the major S&P 500 sectors were up except healthcare.

But the three main US stock indexes were lower for the month, reflecting growing concerns about stretched AI and tech valuations, with investors taking profits and reducing exposure.

“This is a light volume post-holiday session, as those tend to be, with not much activity,” said Cole Smead, CEO at Smead Capital Management. “But I think everyone woke up to the fact that the outcome of AI is still very unknown.”

According to preliminary data, the S&P 500 gained 35.63 points, or 0.52 percent, to end at 6,848.24 points, while the Nasdaq Composite gained 150.31 points, or 0.65 percent, to 23,365.00. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 279.11 points, or 0.59 percent, to 47,705.31. Futures trading was temporarily disrupted in the morning following a CME Group outage that had temporarily frozen currencies, commodities and equity contracts around the globe.

CME’s stock futures offerings linked to US stocks are typically heavily traded before US markets open, with investors relying on them to gauge trends and directions.

CME said it was due to a cooling issue at its CyrusOne data centers.

Shares of CME Group were marginally higher.

“We’re kind of lucky today. It was such a low-volume day, but it could have had a much bigger effect,” said Joe Saluzzi, partner, co-founder and head of equity market structure research and co-head of equity trading at Themis Trading.

“It does point to the risk of these failures and the connectedness to the markets that could cause bigger problems.”

This week also kicked off the holiday shopping season, starting with Thanksgiving on Thursday, Black Friday and Cyber Monday - crucial days of sales for big-box retailers.